US home video spending up for 1st time since 2008

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a welcome relief for Hollywood, Americans are finally spending more on home videos.

For the three months through September, spending rose nearly 5 percent from a year earlier to $3.9 billion. The figures from an industry organization, The Digital Entertainment Group, show the first increase since the recession took hold in early 2008.

While people bought fewer DVDs and made fewer trips to brick-and-mortar rental video stores, they more than made up for it by buying more Blu-ray discs, renting more from kiosks like Redbox and spending more on mail-order DVDs and streaming videos from Netflix.

Buying digital copies of movies and ordering them from set-top box video-on-demand services also rose. For the year, though, spending is still down about 2 percent at $12.3 billion.